Multiplayer Category

Games in our Multiplayer category are multiplayer online games that share some but not all mechanics in common with traditional MMORPGs. Generally, their “massive” nature is contested. They frequently include OARPGs, online shooters, online strategy games, mobile MMOs, and other pseudo-MMOs that optionally provide single-player, offline, or custom-server support. We formerly categorized Multiplayer titles as “Not So Massively” games. You may also be interested in our MOBA category for PvP-centric arena battlers. [Follow the Multiplayer Online Games category’s RSS feed]

Hey, kids! Want to read a big long interview with Cliff Bleszinski about launching LawBreakers? Because you probably shouldn’t read it if you’re an actual kid. There’s a lot of swearing and one anti-government rant in there about having to get your car inspected. But there is some useful information therein, like how Bleszinski thinks that streaming the LawBreakers alpha testing was a mistake that gave people the wrong impression. He also thinks that the title’s initial poor numbers are a reflection of the game in a live state is more about a marathon than a sprint, that the numbers will come naturally over time.

Bleszinski goes on to state that the game is meant to appeal to core shooter audiences rather than having what he describes as “kiddy bumpers” and an aesthetic moving away from what he refers to as “Anna and Elsa running around killing the zombies.” If you don’t mind a lot of swearing, by all means, check out the full interview.

Tencent is sprinkling more money around: Yicai Global and Gamasutra are reporting that the Chinese conglom has invested money into South Korea’s Bluehole Studio. It’s not currently clear how much money; according to Yicai, Bluehole refused a total buyout offer.

We’re presuming that Tencent’s interest is chiefly in Bluehole’s development and publishing of the increasingly popular and obnoxiously named Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds.

But to MMORPG players, Bluehole is probably best known as the Korean studio behind TERA, as well as Devilian (in the East), Project W, and a number of mobile games, including one based on TERA.

Gosh, I had almost forgotten about Fragmented – it’s been a while! But it’s formally launched on Steam as of today for a discounted $5.99.

“Today we have moved Fragmented into a released state after 16 months and more than 30 patches in Early Access,” says Above and Beyond’s JC Smith, noting that launch “does not mean the end of updates” for the game; “tweaks and bug fixes” are still on the table.

Fragmented was originally created by A&B in the Great Repopulation Pause of 2015 as a survival sandbox spin-off of the The Repopulation, first Kickstarted in 2012. The MMORPG was crippled by a nasty public contract dispute between the dev team at A&B and its Hero Engine-lessor Idea Fabrik, driving The Repopulation offline and causing A&B to spend a year working on Fragmented instead. Earlier this year, the studio announced it had sold the game to Idea Fabrik instead, a move that A&B said was in the best interests of the game and the playerbase, while A&B kept Fragmented. Since then, Idea Fabrik has gotten The Repopulation back online in a limited alpha.

Can barbarians experience censorship and shame? On a recent livestream, the Conan Exiles team briefly explained that there will be one significant difference between the European and North American versions of the Xbox client: nudity.

Specifically, it sounds as though the NA version will only have the options for fully clothed or topless characters, whereas the EU version will share the PC’s ability to show downtown plumbing if players desire. Because immersion cannot be reached unless your game world looks like the locker room at the gym, of course.

Some players are not happy over the restriction, although others point out that if this restriction is such a dealbreaker, it is not that hard to switch your game region over to Europe. Now that this crisis has been dealt with, we return you to the rest of the internet, which is completely and totally nudity-free.

As much as Massively OP’s MJ wants to complete all the missions on Venus, she heard that there’s a pet to be had on Mercury — a cuddly kubrow pup! That means she’s eager to finish up the requirements for the Mercury Junction, other missions be darned! All she has left to do is defeat Jackal at Fossa, so an assassination is in order. Join us live at 9:00 p.m. as MJ offs everything standing in the way of getting her puppy.

The Korean StarCraft community is up in arms this week over Blizzard’s rerelease of the game — more specifically, its plan to effectively double-dip into the pockets of the very internet cafe culture that’s kept StarCraft a household name into 2017.

The Korean Herald reports that South Korea’s PC bang association has petitioned Korea’s Fair Trade Commission to intervene, arguing that Blizzard is improperly double-charging an hourly fee for StarCraft: Remastered when they’ve already long since paid a flat fee for the StarCraft license.

The bangs point out that they’ve been forced to install the upgraded version because of stability issues; but for that, they say, the upgraded version contains no new content and isn’t worthy of new fees, alleging that Blizzard is “misappropriating its superior market status to push unfair measures to PC bang owners, most of which are small-sized business owners.”

If you thought that Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones pirate MMO wasn’t going to have lootboxes, seriously, what rock are you living under? (And is it comfy? And can you maybe scoot over and make room for the rest of us?)

In a new interview with Gamespot, Ubisoft creative director Justin Farren says that the studio is going for “more of a service-based approach so that when you pay for this game, you have a commitment from us to develop content, new gameplay, modes, new content for the player to earn, and then of course, new regions to explore, and those things will unfold as the game launches and provide service over time.”

“We don’t want to create pay to win,” he says. “We don’t want to create something where players have to pay to compete. Our PvP is completely horizontal in a way that gives players a chance to develop their skills and compete against other players.”

Massively OP’s MJ has played sandboxes set in space, in prehistoric times, in apocalyptic wastelands, and in fantasy worlds. But until now, she hasn’t played one set in the world war eras! Foxhole has hit early access, and she is heading in to check it out. Unlike many games of these eras that are lobby-based, Foxhole is a persistent world. MJ’s not feeling especially keen on the combat side of things, but she can also participate in the other strategy elements like resources, supply lines and base building. Join us live at 6:00 p.m. as OPTV‘s infamous Stream Team brings you a first look at…

It’s been a while since Massively OP’s MJ and the gang have done a Broodmother raid in ARK, so the team might be a rusty when it heads in. Add to that the fact that the fight was tweeked a bit and who knows how things will turn out? But thanks to the raid event hosts, there will be plenty of rexes and gear for folks to take part in the fun. There’s just no guarantee of survival! Tune in live at 12:00 p.m. for a fresh look at the first raid and see who gets squished: the team or the spider!

City life didn’t quite agree with Massively OP’s MJ — at least not in Conan Exiles. But she’s not ready to let a few grumpy locals and an elevator chase her away for good! She’ll be heading back… just as soon as she conquers Fingerfang Rock, the massive mountain that reaches up to the sky. MJ is determined to get to the top of it. Can she? Tune in live at 9:00 p.m. to see how many deaths it takes to reach the summit.

Believe it or not, kiddos, there were other games in the Warcraft series than just a certain MMORPG. Warcraft III, which came out two years prior to World of Warcraft, was a smash hit that was soon overshadowed by its massively multiplayer sequel.

That doesn’t mean that Blizzard completely forgot about the game — or that players stopped enjoying it. Similar to how the studio continued to support Diablo II a decade or so after its release, Warcraft III is due for a gameplay improvement patch in the near future.

Patch 1.28.6 is currently on the test realm (a first-ever PTR for the title, in fact). The main focus here is to make maps more balanced and easier on the eyes so that all sides have a more-or-less equal start to each game. Still, the team admits that there are still projects that it wants to accomplish with this 15-year-old game: “We are aware Warcraft III matchmaking is a bit long in the tusk; we will be improving matchmaker logic for a future patch.”

Oh man, did we ever end on a cliff hanger yesterday while streaming Batman: The Enemy Within – The TellTale Series! We’ve had some great Batman moments and met an old Batman villain, which led to an explosive event just as I had to end the stream. Hopefully we’ll get some good news in today’s stream as our OPTV audience continues to hop into TellTale’s Crowd Play and vote on what actions Batman takes next!

“The Combat Update improves many facets of the game to provide the best combat experience yet, spanning from how your character responds to your inputs, to shooting mechanics, all the way down to the specifics of where each weapon excels in a gunfight,” Daybreak says. Beyond combat, this update includes some new Points of Interest on the map, and revisions to game pacing. We will be testing this update in phases, starting with a focus on ‘solos.’ Once we’re satisfied that we’ve gotten the feedback we need for solos, we’ll announce the next phase of testing.”

Expect huge changes and additions in the form of weapon ballistics, recoil, animations, the firing reticle, retuned weapon range, shinier rifles, the new dynamic camera, more responsive player movement, improvements to thrown weapons, a ton of new points of interest, bleed mechanic tweaks, vehicle buffs, and functional footwear. I am not making that up.